[Linux-aus] [Fwd: [nzlug] Maori Language for Windows...]

[Bret Busby]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Karin Purser wrote:

> 
> Hi All,
>
> I got this message from one of our New Zealand counter parts.  I was 
> wondering if there was anyone on this list that might know the answer.
>
> Cherio,
> Karin.
>
> http://mirror.linux.org.au
> "May all you hopes and dreams be just around the corner"
>
>> Hello,. 
>
>> Just watched the news, and I saw that Microsoft have released a Maori
>> Language pack for Windows and Office, and a spell checker as well.
>
>> Does anyone know how the project to translate Linux into Maori is going?
>
>> Just wondered if the developer/maintainer of that project wanted to
>> contact TV3 who had the report, to try and get some perspective on the
>> story and do a story of a finished product in Linux?
>
>

The racial segregation continues.

Any maori who can use a computer, can likely speak and understand 
English sufficiently to use the english versions of Windows or Linux 
and to understand the english as used in these two operating systems and 
their applications.

It's a bit like the mob that this year, went along part of the east 
coast of the north island, and threatened businesses who would not pay 
the "maori parliament", a mafia-like organisation, protection money, 
with violent acts against their businesses, and the ongoing acts by some 
militants who seek to have apartheid fully implemented in NZ, like the 
maori terrorists who made their televised threats against the asian 
countries at the APEC conference in 1995, when NZ won the america's cup 
from australia, when the aussie boat broke in half and sank. But then, 
in a country (NZ) that has different seats of parliament for different 
races, even though none of the races are native to NZ, all ancestors of 
NZ'ers having migrated to NZ from other countries, it is not really 
surprising.

If Linux is to embody racial segregation amongst its objectives, then 
so be it, but there is no beneficial need for Linux or Windows, to be 
translated into maori.

It would be better to instead get Linux working properly, and stable, by 
implementing utilities that do things like freeing up memory that was 
used by applications that have been closed, and getting the MTA's to 
include character sets as filtering criteria.

The primary language of NZ, is english. The only people in NZ who 
understand maori and not english, are likely to be unfamiliar with 
electricity and motor cars, etc, let alone computers, and are likely to 
be illiterate. Perhaps, someone at last has found the lost tribe in 
Fiordland, that had never seen white men, and has rapidly "civilised" 
them and taught them computing, and knows the particular language of 
that tribe, to be able to "civilise" them and teach them computing.

And, it would be interesting to find a person who can read and write 
maori, who cannot equally read or write english, given that maori was 
not a written language, and so any maori person who can read or write 
maori, must also be able to equally well, read and write english.

Oh, and, from what I read, it was MS Office, and not Windows, that was 
translated into maori, or had a maori language add-in. And, I wonder 
which maori dialect was used for the MS Office add-ins. Different tribes 
and different areas, have different words and grammars. Each of the 
differen tribes, the Ngati Porou, Tuhoe, Ngati Awa, Nga Puhi, Ngai Tahu, 
Moriori, and the other many maori tribes, had somewhat different 
languages.

And, given the pedantic nature of computer commands, what happens when 
the "a" and its variants, "aa" and the "a" with a macron, are used and 
interchanged, as can happen between speakers of the same dialect, apart 
from different dialects?

And, what happens to commands like ls, given that maori has no 's' 
character, and no 'l' character? And, what happens to X-windows, given 
that maori has no 'x' character? Do these facilities simply get deleted 
from a Maori version of linux? And, what will it be named, without the 
'l' and 'x' of Linux?

It would be more relevant to this list, to ask when Linux is going to be 
translated into all of the separate aborigine languages and dialects. I 
think there are only a few hundred of them, some with as few as one 
person knowing a particular language (there was a case of an aborigine 
man who was prosecuted, but could not be tried in a court, because 
no-one else could be found, who spoke his language, and so no-one 
could translate for him and explain what was happening).

But then, as shown by the upcoming conference, NZ is being absorbed into 
australia, or, the Linux groups in New Zealand appear to be giving up 
their national identity, and being absorbed into australia. So, it would 
be more appropriate to translate Linux and Windows, and their 
applications, into strine, to provide for the average aussie, and the 
absorption of NZ into oz.

And, when is Linux going to be translated into Latin and the "q" 
gaelic, and the "p" gaelic, and other such languages as equally alive as 
maori?

--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
  you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
   Chapter 28 of
   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
   A Trilogy In Four Parts",
   written by Douglas Adams,
   published by Pan Books, 1992

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